ProductionPartner  Version 1.1
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Introduction 

ProductionPartner (PP) allows the user to record and play arbitrary sounds. Any number and type of soundfiles may be organized in documents called playlists. The sounds in a playlist can be played and rearranged in any order. In addition any sound and playlist document can be commented.

Highlights 

- Recording and playback of CD quality sounds, arrange and rearrange sounds in playlists. 
- Selectively listen to parts in the playlist using tape player buttons for recording, playback, fast forward, fast backward, piece forward, piece backward.
Use slow forward/backward or clickin while listening, find easily certain parts of  sounds.
- Save and restore the state of a given playlist with comments for archives throughout the net.
- Write playlists to disk, to NeXT DACs, or to the DSPport for final digital CD mastering.

Description

For Recording of  CD quality sounds the user opens the Recorder window, which contains sounds which can be played with standard tape player buttons for recording, playing, fast forward, fast backward, piece forward, piece backward and storing sounds that have been recorded or created onto disk.  The recorded soundfiles are placed automatically in the playlist window  for quick reference. Each entry in the playlist acts like a separate file.  Users may manipulate several files at once simply by selecting them from the playlist  applying a command or dragging the icon (or multiple) to/from the File Viewer or to other playlists.  This scheme allows users to quickly rearrange sounds, open, close, save, and play groups of files.  It also keeps the sounds organized and at a user's fingertips.  In addition prerecorded, stored sounds from the disk or other playlists can be opened or easily dragged to the other playlist windows. 

Playlists may be opened as many as you like, sounds  can be dragged from one to the other, without copying. There is only one sound, the original. Links are automatically created when one sound is used by different playlists. Sounds and playlist may be played and recorded throughout the ethernet without problems.
Once several sounds have been recorded, edited, and polished, it is not necessary to  mix one to each other, which takes a lot of processing time for restoring on disk. Instead any selection of the short soundpieces can be played in any order as they were one big piece of sound to create CD-quality master recordings.
Since the NeXT soundfile format is used, sounds can be easily shared with other applications.  If necessary they can be converted into other sound formats.

Features

PP has lots of advantages in handling and organizing pieces of music for final production.
1. Sound is kept only once on your harddisk, but may be used in lots of  different music pieces.  
2. You do not need to add piece by piece in an editor to produce the final version of music.
3. Manipulating parts of pieces, reorganizing and playback  parts for them, loops and repetition is handled very fast  and does not need additional disk space.
4. Using compressed sounds with realtime decompression 75%- 87.5% harddisk space is saved.

Application

The primary use of   Production Partner  as a postproduction tool, is  to organize sounds, stack pieces of music or speech in a playlist document, ready to playback to the DSPPort device to a DATrecorder. The document playlist contains all the pieces of sounds or parts of music you finally want to be played piece by piece, continously, without clicks or pauses. 
PP may also be used as simple Phraserecorder, -player.


Interface Support

Recording and Playback is supported through the DSPPort of the NeXT, which allows to record analog  or digital sounds in mono and stereo. NeXT's builtin microphone and line out RCAs may also be used. There are numerous high quality DSPPort Interfaces supported by Production Partner.
At  this moment the following DSPPort Interfaces are supported:

Analog Interfaces:  
Sony PCM with DSPPort (RCN), 
ProPort (RCN/Ariel), 
DM-N Microphone (RCN/Ariel), 
Digital Ears (MetaResearch)

Digital Interfaces (AES/EBU): 
CDAT (RCN), 
DatPort (RCN/Ariel) 
NeXT Mikrophone Input (8 bit quality)
Playback is also supported though the 16 bit analog output (RCA) plugs of your NeXT.

Future releases:

1) Editing of sounds.
2) Mix soundfiles in realtime.
3) Variable crossfade between pieces of sound in the playlist.
4) Realtime effect panel (echo , reverb, equalizer, pitch-shifting, time compression/extension).

Production Partner will be supported on Intel Platforms with RCN's DSPcard and various other soundcards.

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ProductionPartner 1.1
Ossip Kaehr und Roger Regitz,

Contakt: R C N  Rupert Nieberle
		  Skalitzerstraûe 12,
		  D - 1000 Berlin 36,
		  Germany
		  
		  Tel. +49.30.6187765
		  Fax.            6116774
		  	
Copyright (c) 1993, O.Kaehr, R.Regitz
RCN Realtime Computing and Nets. All Rights Reserved.

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Regulary price:
PP-B 	Production Partner Basis Module		$295.-
PP-X 	Production Partner Additional Modules
		 (To be announced)


Introductory price limited to  June 15, 1993

PP-B 	Production Partner Basis Module		$195.-

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